Sunday 6 October 1661

(Lord’s day). To church in the morning; Mr. Mills preached, who, I expect, should take in snuffe [anger] that my wife not come to his child’s christening the other day. The winter coming on, many of parish ladies are come home and appear at church again; among others, the three sisters the Thornbury’s, a very fine, and the most zealous people that ever I saw in my life, even to admiration, if it were true zeal. There was also my pretty black girl, Mrs. Dekins, and Mrs. Margaret Pen, this day come to church in a new flowered satin suit that my wife helped to buy her the other day.

So home to dinner, and to church in the afternoon to St. Gregory’s, by Paul’s, where I saw Mr. Moore in the gallery and went up to him and heard a good sermon of Dr. Buck’s, one I never heard before, a very able man. So home, and in the evening I went to my Valentine, her father and mother being out of town, to fetch her to supper to my house, and then came Sir W. Pen and would have her to his, so with much sport I got them all to mine, and we were merry, and so broke up and to bed.

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Annotations

"the most zealous people that ever I saw in my life, even to admiration, if it were true zeal."

How would Anglican zeal, true or feigned, have demonstrated itself at this period? Cries of "Amen!" or Visitations of the Spirit (real or assumed), such as are known among the Pentecostals and others here in the American South, don't seem the thing.

Back on St Valentine's Day, he chose Martha Castle (the daughter of Sir William Batten) to be his Valentine. Now the Penns and the Pepys are being neighbourly when she's been left by herself in her parents' house while they are away, perhaps at their family home in Walthamstow, north-east London. I don't know where Mr Castle is, but I'm getting the distinct impression that women were more liberated in the 17th century than their great-granddaughters were to be.

Hmm - a Buck, a Moose and the traveling Thornberrys - I feel a cartoon coming on

Seems like the Reverend is in a tiff or snit because of the slight[no gifte]."...should take in snuffe [anger] that my wife not come to his child's christening the other day…”

The uppers are back in town after the summer gambolling in the countryside even tho it be wet.“…many of parish ladies are come home and appear at church again…”Ah! the eye be twitching again, no need to go to the teatro now with all this entertainment for Free [must curb expenses?]“…and so broke up and to bed….”???

Josh, as a Canadian Anglican (That's an Episcopalian to you Yanks, just in case you didn't know.), I agree that calling out a hearty "Amen!" during the sermon does seem out of place these days.

But my mother was raised in a low Anglican household in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She told me a tale once of how she was in church listening to a sermon. (This would have been in the 1920s.) As the minister was in full fleg, a little old lady in the audience was moved enough by the Spirit, to call out "Amen!"

To which the minister stopped, cocked his ear, and cried happily, "Ah-hah! I'm reaching someone."

I don't think this would have happened in a high Anglican church, but in any case, it certainly has seemed to have seeped out of the Anglican/Episcopalean churches in N. America.